ARTICLES ABOUT BILL WIRTZ BY DATE - PAGE 3

To hockey fans, Bill Wirtz will be remembered as "Dollar Bill," the tightfisted owner of the Blackhawks who kept home games off TV and let some of the team's biggest stars skate out of town. To friends, Wirtz was a generous, principled and fiercely loyal man who built on the financial empire put together by his father and maintained a desire to win matching that of the biggest Blackhawks booster. A throwback to an era when family ownership of professional sports franchises was the norm, Wirtz, 77, died of cancer Wednesday at Evanston Hospital, according to the Blackhawks organization.

In a story published in Friday's Toronto Star, Bill Wirtz said he would consider selling the Blackhawks if the NHL Players Association installs a labor hard-liner as its new executive director. "If the union hired someone like [former director Bob Goodenow], who just says you're lying whenever you say you're losing money, I'd put the team up for sale," Wirtz told the Star. "And I think that might cause other owners to look at their own investments." The leadership of the NHL Players Association is in disarray.

Add another name--this one very well-known--to the list of those who say Blackhawks President and owner Bill Wirtz has severely damaged hockey in Chicago. Ex-Bears coach Mike Ditka said on WMVP-AM 1000 Thursday he was "not really fond of the ownership of the Blackhawks" in response to a question of which Chicago team would win a championship next. Ditka said he was a hockey fan back when the Hawks had Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita and players such as Gordie Howe made frequent appearances at the old Stadium.

Bill Wirtz sat at the desk in his United Center office, near a full-size boxing robe worn and autographed by Muhammad Ali. The black robe with white trim was framed behind glass and leaning against a wall adorned with Blackhawks hockey photos. It was fitting that the Ali memorabilia dominated the room. This has been a year in which NHL hockey was dead and big-time prizefighting was revived in this building. Even as Wirtz, the owner of the Blackhawks, anticipates the resuscitation of skate blades on the rink this fall, he believes his arena also can accommodate the return of high-laced shoes in the ring.

Blackhawks general manager Bob Pulford said Wednesday that coach Brian Sutter will return as the team's head coach--when the NHL returns to action. "I think Brian deserves a chance to coach," Pulford said Wednesday night at Allstate Arena while watching the Wolves play the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks in the first game of their American Hockey League playoff series. Sutter took the Hawks to the playoffs in his first season in 2001-02 and was a finalist for NHL Coach of the Year.

Reports of the National Hockey League's demise indeed may be exaggerated, but the way the league is going, its participants should be glad if anyone notices at all. Negotiations between players and owners have made progress over the last 24 hours, creating some hope that a season still could be salvaged after two-thirds of it already has been lost to a lockout. But hockey's major professional league has slipped so far from the public's consciousness that Stan Mikita arguably could draw a bigger crowd at a Chicago autograph session than a Blackhawks game could at the United Center.

Every time I read about how the Blackhawks treated Bobby Hull, I want to get sick. Bob Verdi related in his recent article (Tribune, May 12) that the Hawks "couldn't legally retain Hull by matching the $1 million signing bonus he received via resources pooled from other WHA franchises" back in 1972. If my memory serves, the Hawks offered the Toronto Maple Leafs $1 million just seven years earlier (1965) for Frank Mahovlich. I don't recall Arthur Wirtz or son Bill passing the hat around the NHL back then to raise the funds to acquire Mahovlich, who was a very good player but hardly in Hull's class.

The Wirtz name is virtually synonymous with the Chicago Blackhawks. And though Gail Wirtz, daughter of the team's owner, Bill Wirtz, is involved in hockey, she's in a totally different, excuse the pun, arena. A licensed clinical counselor, registered art therapist and mother of two teenagers, Wirtz, 50, is helping young hockey players to get along with each other and the world around them. She's doing it all through art. Wirtz launched the Hockey Art Alliance Team Building program in January 2003 after learning of discord among the players on Johnny's Jets Bantams, one of the youth hockey teams based out of Johnny's Ice House, a skating rink located about a mile east of the United Center.

I've seen this movie before: Former Blackhawks player, hockey savvy, smart guy, media friendly, becomes part of Bob Pulford's management day-care program. Now playing: Dale Tallon in "Bob Murray, Part Deux." And good luck writing a different ending. While the conniving Mike Smith tried to take some kind of credit for the youth in this organ-I-zation, the truth is the core of this year's team was acquired by Murray, the longtime Hawks defenseman who was groomed by Pulford before taking Pulford's job before Pulford took it back the way Pulford always takes it back, like now. Murray wasn't allowed to finish the job. No one ever is. Not Murray, not Mike Keenan, not anyone who wanted full GM powers because it would render Pulford irrelevant in a lot of ways, and Bill Wirtz would never let that happen to the exchequer of the hockey fiefdom, dwindling as it is. Tallon saw how Murray was ordered by the Wirtz-Pulford axis to whack a coach he didn't want to whack.